The Conscious Classroom

A Mind Like Water, Inspiring Calm in the Classroom

July 22, 2020 Episode 18
The Conscious Classroom
A Mind Like Water, Inspiring Calm in the Classroom
Show Notes Transcript

Bruce Lee, the iconic martial artist, often spoke about the value of a mind like water -- fluid, flexible, soft enough to go around obstacles, persistent enough to carve a hole in rock, and forceful enough to uproot tall trees or buildings. Water can be invisible as steam, transparent in its liquid state, and hard and opaque as ice. Our minds can be as flexible and powerful if we know how to cultivate attentive calm, precise discrimination, and flexible perspectives. In this episode, Amy Edelstein will talk about using the metaphor of a Mind Like Water to inspire these qualities in the classroom. 

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Welcome to the conscious classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teams to create more conscious, supportive, and enriching learning environ. I'm your host Amy Edelstein, and I'll be sharing transformative insights and easy to implement classroom supports that are all drawn from mindful awareness and systems thinking the themes we'll discuss are designed to improve your own joy and fulfillment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share.

Let's get on with this next episode.

Hello, welcome to the conscious classroom. My name is Amy Edelstein. Today. We're gonna be talking about inviting home during this time of

COVID 19, where we are all pressured. And required to make changes that are unexpected and unanticipated. This time of, COVID 19 can give us the opportunity to calm focus ourselves and allow ourselves to. Steady and to build steadiness for our students. Generally, at this time of year, we are trying to inspire our students and encourage them to do their best and make it to the end of the year.

I just got off teaching an online class with a school that inner strength worked with over the past year.  and we had a blast. We had 21 students on, we did. We talked about what it is to develop a mind like water, what it is to have that kind of flexibility and fluidity, where you can let your mind flow around obstacles rather than coming up against them and trying to fight them.

Students all know Bruce Lee. So Bruce Lee is a really good inroad when you wanna try to convey the value of mindfulness and, and why it's important for us to cultivate this sense of inner stability and, inner peace and calm. What I found with them is that, what they told me was that they're missing school because they're missing this structure.

they're finding it hard to figure out what to do on their own. And they seemed, really animated and really happy to talk and really eager to be able to engage in a way that was, um, really pleasant and just heart. So heartwarming to. That kind of engagement and delight at being together. Um, they all, when we finished the class, they were wishing the principal got on for 10 minutes and they were wishing the principal and they were wishing myself and the other classroom teacher a blessed day.

And that kind of warmhearted, generous spirit coming out of them was really, a delight to see. And it just shows that when we. Allow students to gather together in a framework that has structure that has a, a teacher, it has instruction. It has the sense of, school hierarchy because the principal is there that positive, framework and scaffolding is made available for the students.

But because we're in a time where classrooms are more open. And their participation can only boost their grade instead of lower their grade. It's inviting a kind of curiosity and ease that we often don't see during the school year. I think that says more about the way we structure our classrooms than it does about the students themselves.

There are a lot of lessons that we can learn from this time. If we're willing to retool, a lot of the structures that we've taken is given that are expedient that make it easy for us to process large numbers of kids through this shoot that we call education and move them from grade to grade to grade.

If we start focusing on the quality of being between us. And between between us as educators and our students in between the students and themselves, when we start creating safe and inviting formats, students will respond, they will feel that invitation to express themselves. They will feel that invitation to humanize their relationships with their teachers, with the author.

In this class, their classroom teacher, brought his cat on. When we sat in our mindfulness practice, he had his cat sitting there and the cat didn't really wanna sit very still, but that kind of, bringing teachers, bringing their lives into the classroom with their students, help students feel like.

Their teachers are human beings and they have cats. Like they have one of the students, said that during the, the meditation, he got really startled because he was really still and he forgot about everything. And then his cat jumped on him and he said he, he was start completely startled. He wouldn't have felt so free to say that if his classroom teacher hadn't brought his cat into the room, I don't think those kinds of distractions, reduce the quality of learning.

I think they, in fact augment it, the importance of calm. It can't be. Overstated, usually, students are in environment. If they're coming from the city, they're in environments where there's a lot of churn, they may have a very warm and stable home environment, but you go out on the street and there's traffic.

There's people shouting. There's just a sense of churn in the air. These times, of course, where everyone's staying at home and schools are closed, mean that the external churn has slowed down to some degree. And that allows us if we're willing to take advantage of it, to start to experience an underlying calm.

One of the students in the class today said that in the experience of the mindfulness practice, where we did a mindful breathing and a mindful body scan, she said it let her have a conversation with her herself, which was really interesting because she's spending a lot more time alone, a lot less time socializing.

But we need to create calm and space for those kind of conversations to occur. We, we had a conversation about it and talked about how during the adolescent years, having those deeper conversations and, and making room. In one's life for a little bit of calm and quiet. So you can have that inner conversation with yourself is really important.

Adolescence is a time when teens are finding themselves, they're figuring out who they are, what they care about, what they value and if they don't give themselves, or we as educators, don't give themselves, give them the space. To access that level or dimension of their experience. They won't have those conversations.

And if they don't have those conversations as teens, they're gonna stumble into early adulthood without any deeper awareness about why they're doing what they're doing, what's important to them. What are their values? And they'll either. They'll be drawn to certain people or they'll shun certain people based on values.

They haven't deeply examined. They'll stumble through higher education without being certain what they really wanna do or why, or they'll stumble into debt for higher education. Not being sure that that's a direction they wanna go. A lot of the, the students that I have the opportunity of working with, want to go into a trade.

And if they stumble into an associate's degree, that's not the training that they want. They're gonna come out with less self confidence and less preparation for the workforce. And if they do that because a guidance counselor influenced them. They didn't figure out what they really wanted to do and why and what they care about and how they see their lives.

They'll end up in a track that however well, meaning may not be the appropriate track for them. Inviting, calm into the classroom means that we're really teaching to the deeper dimension of the student. We're teaching them how to be full human beings. Multidimensional human beings with a sense of themselves and with a sense of what they don't know.

So they can seek help. They can find guidance, they can reach out to adults or books, philosophers over the ages or inspiring literature to be able to find, um, their.

The, the contemporary education system in America at least is overwhelmed and overburdened. And it doesn't, feel like it has the time to value what calm and space can bring.

The district feels overwhelmed. As I, as I work with the teachers in the district and the counselors, they're telling me that they're working harder and longer hours during this time than they did before now, that's an impossible demand to put on people. We're all under a great deal of social stress, emotional stress.

Maybe we know somebody who's, I. Maybe we know somebody who passed away during this time, and then to add that demand. It's it's it has a lack of awareness. It's trying to process 200,000 students in a city, which is important. We need to keep track of them. We need to find out who's safe. Who's has food insecurity who has, um, home situations that are unstable.

that's important. We need to keep track of these students. It's very hard to do. It's very time consuming to do, but a system that doesn't value that kind of spaciousness and calm for its employees is not gonna value that kind of spaciousness and comfort. If we don't value that kind of spaciousness and calm, what we're teaching students to become is more harried, less dimensional and less healthy.

So what kind of culture are we educating students into?

These are the questions that we not only need to ask. Cuz I think, um, the answers are fairly obvious. We really need to be sure that in our own lives we're expressing something different as educators. We need to embody the principles that we want to see. So that means inviting calm. It doesn't mean our lives are always gonna be calm.

Maybe we're gonna be really busy and we're gonna have a lot to do. There's gonna be online course platforms to build or exams to grade and all kinds of students who need special attention or special dispensation from the rules, which take out more time. And there there's just there's busyness in our lives.

But that busyness can come in a rhythm of detachment, which the way I like to describe detachment is not separation. Cause when we think about detachment, we think, oh, that sounds cold. Like somebody's out and witnessing. But if you think about the astronauts or, and when they would go up in space, they were so far.

From the day to day strife of their hometown, but they'd look down on the globe and they'd see this beautiful glistening. Globe with the blue oceans and the white whistle of clouds. And they'd look down and they'd think about the people they loved down there. And they felt, you know, some of them have published some of their, writings about their time and space, especially the early ones.

And what they describe is so much love. They could look down at their lives and their loved ones from that. From that detachment from the daily traffic jams and the daily frustrations and the forms you need to get to the school district and whatever else as an educator is on your mind when you get that detachment.

What it does when detachment is kind of an unfortunate word, in, in English, cuz the feeling it gives is one of removal. Or separation, but really that sense of detachment is, is a con is a perspective or a space which allows us to bring our care and connection to the forefront. When we're so hassled and so harried and so behind and so frustrated.

And so feeling like we don't measure up and we just, you know, wanna throw in the towel and we're just fed up or we're blaming. The person at the district who didn't think well, and now we have to do double work because they didn't tell us the right thing the first time. And all of that stuff that builds up for teachers creates, even though it makes you deeply enmeshed, but there's more separation.

You're like closer to something. And you're so close that there's friction. When you can have that space or detachment, it allows room to bring forward. What's most important.

I'd love to find a new word for detachment. So if any of you have a better word for detachment, then let me know. I, but I think, it it's a, a product that calm gives us. It's a product of being allowed to. Look within to think, to be, to connect with ourselves. And, and that's a very precious environment to create for our students in our classroom.

And it needs to come from our own experience. It needs to come from our own experience of being able to look down on those. We care about from. The Hubble spacecraft, you know, and, and look down and say, all those beautiful people I truly care about. Are there rather than looking around and, or watching the news and just feeling animosity  towards so many that feel, um, that are, are showing our lack of maturity as a human species right now.

We wanna bring that maturity to the forefront. We have so much more potential capacity, than we're we often, um, allow ourselves to live from. And as teachers, as educators that I feel is our mandate. It's our mandate to, as Parker Palmer said, have the courage to teach. His beautiful book that was published so long ago is, is inspiring because he's speaking to the vocation of teaching.

He's speaking to the calling of teaching. He's speaking to that, which pulls us to want to bring forward those, um, new shoots of potential in those we teach. That is, that's a noble calling. It's a noble vocation. It's not just a job or profession or the security of benefits or, um, a title it's a calling.

And when that calling is valued, we have the energy to do what's needed for the students and for the bureaucracy and say no to what's not needed. That's the value of that space, that perspective, that detachment, the value of that detachment is we wanna maintain that pool of calm because that's where creativity can germinate.

And if we can, we can maintain that pool of calm within. It doesn't mean that things won't get chaotic and we're in a classroom and students are talking over each other and they're getting excited and, or it's five minutes before the bell and they you've just lost their attention. And they're never gonna come back because they're gone and they're, they're talking about what's next and singing and dancing and whatever they do.

That's okay. Those kinds of disruptions and chaos are just part of, they're just part of, you know, adolescence exploding, out of the, just the bodies of kids. They just seem to explode out in all directions. That is, um, those are the kinds of healthy chaos, healthy excitement, exuberance, and disorder within a container that holds.

Enough calm to be able to navigate. So that means that those unruly times won't get out of hand. People won't get hurt and that has to do with, because a pool of calm has enough room has enough given it to allow for a healthy disorder.

And when we're very tense and very. When we're really wound up and, and just so clenched, we, we break and, you know, it's probably happened to most of us, or we've seen countless teachers when we've walked into take over their class as they exit for another class. And you've seen them just at the breaking point and a student says something that's innocuous or not a big deal.

And they just snap because calm. Has given it, it has play, it has flexibility. It has resilience built into it and tension and taughtness and tightness doesn't it breaks. And when educators break in that way, they usually take it out on their students. Sometimes they take it out on their colleagues, but they usually take it out on their students.

So calm is really important. One of the definitions of resilience is being able to return to balance when knocked off balance. So how quickly are we able to recalibrate and bring ourselves back to center when we've been knocked off balance? So it doesn't just mean that we can grid our teeth and make it through a very difficult moment.

It means that we can, when, when that tsunami hits and when we've been kind of churned up by the wave and ground into the sand, how quickly and gracefully can we stand up, dust ourselves off and move forward.

There's a lot of talk and education circles about building resiliency for students and helping them be more resilient because we know they're gonna get knocked around. How do we build more resiliency into our classroom? How is the onus on us as educators to create that pool of calm that at its center has give, that has flow.

That has room. And this is where our own mindfulness practice and introducing whatever type of mindful contemplation is appropriate in the school that you're in is really important. Not every school is gonna be able to do silent breath practice. It's not gonna be appropriate. It's not gonna be welcomed by parents.

It's not gonna fit in the school culture. There are many other ways to create that kind of contemplative environment. And create that kind of silence and create that kind of calm. I have one friend who's a, he's a great teacher. He's, he's really a brilliant young teacher. He, um, now teaches. He's the diversity and inclusion officer at a private boy school outside of Philadelphia.

And he was a musician or still is a musician. So he would play music in between during all the transitions, transitioning from one activity to another transitioning from the. Arriving into class before class started ending class. And the, the music that he would use would, would vary. He had very, far reaching taste from classical to Avan, Gar jazz to hip hop, to pop, to instrumental.

And that what the students got used to was the fact that they would have a non-conceptual transition into their class and out of their. Or from lecture to study, they would have that kind of musical transition and they wouldn't necessarily know what it was gonna be. He was usually pretty good at matching the mood.

And sometimes then the kids needed a pick me up. Sometimes they needed a slowing down. Sometimes they needed some sad song because they were really moody and Marose and they needed a sad song cuz that's what was gonna meet the moment. That's building that pool of calm, it's building that environment.

And that space that allows students to be with themselves without needing to verbal is not the only way we communicate with each other or especially in a group in a group. A lot of the communication is nonverbal. How are we holding that space? Do we only think we can create calm when everyone's quiet?

Do we only think, do we only think that we can create that kind of flexibility that give in the system by spacing things out that given in the system can be created through a musical interlude that becomes a habit. It can be created by mindful reflection. It can create, be created by some moments of unstructured time where the students can draw, they can write, they can create some kind of poetry or expression.

That's unstructured.

That also provides a little give in the system. It give, it provides an outlet for students to be able to express, to contemplate, to take that inward journey, to listen to themselves. When we allow students that space of calm to listen to themselves, generally speaking will need to do a lot less disciplin.

When students have the time to listen to themselves and they have the guidance to, to understand how to use that calm space, they'll do it. And the fruits of that will be that they'll have a better understanding of themselves, a better self knowledge about what's going on and they will then need less negative attention.

From their peers or from their teachers, cuz they won't have to squirt out the edges, not knowing what's happening, but they just feel bottled up and they've gotta let something out.

Reflecting on ways to build calm is, is a valuable exercise. And one that we, if we build it into our curricula, it will start to permeate the culture and the climate of the classroom. I've had many teachers when, when I work with their classes, tell me that the way that I hold the space has shown them how they could relate to their class differently.

And it's helped. Bring classes together that are very factionalized and it's also helped them be more easy with the classes that they don't gel with. Cuz we're human beings. You know, we're not super people as teachers, we're human beings. In some classes we like better than others. It's okay. It happens that way.

Some classes are hard to work with. They get on our nerves or they're annoying, or they don't like us. And they decide that before they've even given us a chance and that makes it hard for us to work with them. But if we keep that astronaut's view looking down that won't bother us, we won't be trying to get their affirmation.

We won't be overly bothered by their, their lack of connection with us personally. We'll just, we'll just keep our sites on what's most important and creating that container. That is wholesome and that has space and give in the system and we'll know so long as we keep our sites on that, we'll be doing our job.

We'll get fulfillment out of it. And some students might change and some students won't. Or maybe you'll find I had one class like that. And one girl who I was absolutely sure. Just really, really didn't like the class. When we had our last session, I was saying goodbye to everyone. She expressed so beautifully.

How much she enjoyed the class. How much it meant to her now from the outside. I believe me, I never saw that.  I never saw that. Mostly. She was hanging on her boyfriend the whole time talking eye rolling. Um, never doing the exercises. So I have no idea, but something about the container that didn't react really made her appreciate it.

I'm glad she said that because I I've often thought about that. And with adolescence with younger kids, sometimes it's easier, you know, what they like and what they don't like with adolescence. Sometimes when they like things it's hard to know.

And I think the last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of calm really has to do with the atmosphere of competition. And I, I don't, from what I've seen with teens in my own experience, many people do not thrive in an atmosphere, in a competitive atmosphere. They thrive in. This is also kind of unfortunate because it's a weird negative, but in the non-zero world, So non zero, usually we have zero sum.

So there's a valedictorian. Everybody else is second best. Everybody else is. I don't. I think that's great. I think somebody who really excels deserves the recognition and they will want the recognition. I think that's fair. But within the day to day classroom environment, the non, the zero sum wears.

Everyone's in a hierarchy. This one wins, then everybody else loses and varying degrees. Doesn't bring out the best in everyone. So when everyone is mutually, supportive and encouraging, and in this environment where everyone's trying to Surpas their own goals and there's this environment that we can all do better.

That we can be more creative. We can be more expressive. We can be more authentic. We can be more, um, engaged. We can be more enthusiastic. We can be more inspirational. You tend to see students doing better, that they will do better. They will get better grades. They will complete their homework. They will become more interested because enthusiasm breeds, enthusiasm.

Calm breeds, breeds, more space to reflect. So I think that the, the non-zero sum. Equation is very important in these atmospheres. And I don't mean that we wanna cultivate that environment where Johnny gets a trophy, even if he loses, I , that's not my, that's not what I'm advocating, but what I advocating is a sense of teamwork, collaboration, mutual support peers, work off of each other.

So when there's that atmosphere of encouraging each other on to do to Excel at their own pace, with their own skills, they will stretch they'll stretch and step beyond. And happiness breeds that the sense of, of a happy and accepting and open and resilient, a flexible. Poorest malleable environment will inspire students to do well.

I think that's why the mindfulness work has been so valuable in schools is because it's helping students get back in touch with themselves and with, with, curiosity. And an interest in learning an interest in figuring out unanswerable questions. And when they put their mind on unanswerable questions, then it, it makes them also more interested in the questions that are answerable and that they can study for and learn.

But they need to have those open ended questions and those open ended questions arise in an environment that's welcoming and has that sense of space to ponder.

So let's close with a practice that we can do with the students. That'll help cultivate both calm and that kind of open ended inquiry.

So we can allow ourselves to rest in our meditative posture, using the sound of the bell to focus.

So begin by just allowing yourself

to scan your body.

Noticing where there's energy and where there's not

noticing the breath as it goes into your body and where you lose. Awareness where it just becomes absorbed in the lungs, follow its path and its trajectory. As the breath goes in and notice where you lose contact with it, the breath is still going. We're still oxygenating our bodies, but there's a certain point where we can no longer sense.

The breath is separate.

And

as you rest your attention on your breath. Allow your body to settle

and picture yourself settling like a stone in the middle of the river.

The water is moving around

you and you're settled. No friction, no tension. The water just finds its way around. Either side. And you remain still and steady

notice what it feels like. As you imagine being a rock in the middle of a little river in the water, just happily flowing around you,

rolling around either side and then continuing on its way. No friction, no tension. And you're there steady without  without force. Without

effort.

So notice the calm, even in the midst of the activity,

notice the ease.

And now remember the last time that you got really frustrated, really stressed and imagine

that everything that was making you stressed.

Just like little bits of dust that fell into the river and you were still steady.

And imagine all those frustrations just being carried by the current of the river. When it comes up against the rock, just flows to either side and continues on its way. It touches you, but it doesn't move you off. Course. It keeps going as all events do and you remain steady.

Allow yourself to be calm and allow that feeling of calm to create an imprint so that you remember it.

and you can begin to bring your attention back. And when you hear the bell, we can finish.

Wonderful. So take this with you. Experiment with creating calm with the students who work for listening to the conscious classroom to work with. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein in any education environment. Please check out the show notes on inner strength foundation.net. Allow that for links and more information depth.

And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend wellbeing and pass the love. To be the tangible foundation of all the learning environments that you're a part of so that everyone that we share those environments with teachers and colleagues, students, and their peers can start developing a sensitivity and preference for peace and calm and stability.

As the fuel and nutrients that are gonna carry us forward into a better future.